Reshaping his craft
Artistic teacher finds hobby that fits from class to glass, he has enough time to enjoy both
By Carrie Coppernoll, Staff Writer
To Andy Boatman, teaching is teaching. It doesn't matter if he's explaining hardware or glassware. The 39-year-old has two classrooms: a computer lab at Sequoyah Middle School in Edmond and a glass-blowing studio in northwest Oklahoma City.
About six years ago, Boatman started looking for a hobby. He toyed with lots of ideas, even building motorcycles. But he picked up glass art after visiting his aunt, who blows glass in Santa Fe, N.M.
"It fit,” he said.
He built a shop in a barn on his property in Arcadia, and he recently moved that shop into a studio at 1218 N Western Ave.
The art requires lots of equipment — plenty of heaters, specialized coolers and a pile of hand tools that look like a blacksmith's arsenal. One heating vat holds 300 pounds of molten glass, simmering at 2,000 degrees. The glass in the vat is clear, and Boatman adds tiny colored glass chips to it to dye his creations. He points to one heater, "Yeah, I cook nachos in here.”
Molding glass is time-consuming and tedious.
"It's a process of shaping, heating, shaping,” he said. And in the end, the final, fragile product can break. But Boatman doesn't worry too much: "It's just sand. There's always more of it.”
Glass is Boatman's first serious artistic endeavor. It's therapeutic and frustrating, and Boatman said he's had time to reflect.
"It's new and different, which is exciting,” he said. "But then it's kind of scary to do something like this, too.”
Most evenings he teaches private classes or rents out his studio to individuals. Some weekends he takes his glass to shows or festivals.
Wednesday nights, he teaches students from the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, with new sessions starting periodically. The next session will begin in October. To sign up, call 236-3100.
Boatman loves glass, but he doesn't plan to quit teaching middle school.
"When they tell musicians, ‘Don't quit your day job,' it's the same,” he said, laughing. "There are full-time glass blowers in the world, but I don't know them.”
Teaching middle-schoolers and adults is basically the same, Boatman said. He shows, explains and then asks his students to try for themselves.
"It's fantastic to watch the process and to see the ‘a-ha' moments,” he said.
